Alex Sayf Cummings
Biographic Data
| ID | 1467294 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alex Sayf Cummings |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alex Sayf |
| FAMILY NAME | Cummings |
| SIGNATURE | CUMMINGS A S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Georgia State University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 16 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 12 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Listening to the Democratic Forest with Brian Harnetty
Sound artist Brian Harnetty talks about his Forest Listening Rooms project and reflects on the politics of building interactive, immersive conversations about people and the landscapes that surround them in Appalachia, as well as the artistic and philosophical influences on his unique approach to composition
Wrap-up
It’s a dark and stormy night on the Taconic State Parkway, in upstate New York; snaking along the path of the Hudson River, the road is usually scenic but tonight is draped with rain and headlight glare. A voice from North Country Public Radio calls off a list of names, frenetically free-associating about Dominick Calsolaro and Lucinda Hannon and Mary Perrin Scott and all the other generous people who donated to the station to keep public radio a…
Authors and Apparatus
Reviewed by: Authors and Apparatus: A Media History of Copyright by Monika Dommann Alex Sayf Cummings (bio) Authors and Apparatus: A Media History of Copyright. By Monika Dommann. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019. Pp. 262. Hardcover $41.95. "We historians always come to things late," Monika Dommann writes in an epigraph for the ages. It is the curious weakness of history as a discipline to pick up on new theories and methodologies only afte…
Brain Magnet”
This essay aims to historicize urban theorist Richard Florida’s influential formulation of the “creative class” by focusing on the emergence of a high-tech economy in North Carolina’s Research Triangle metropolitan area. In the 1950s, a powerful coalition of academics, businesspeople, and politicians launched a plan to move the state away from its traditional reliance on low-wage industries by founding a research park between Raleigh, Durham, and…
Of sorcerers and thought leaders
Hoopla about the emergence of an information economy was widespread by the 1990s, when academics, politicians and the press celebrated the social transformations brought about by computers. Yet the rhetoric of high-tech revolution long predates Windows 95 or even the World Wide Web. Building on the work of Howard Brick and others on postwar debates over technology and the economy, this article explores how the trope of the “information revolution…
Eliot M. Tretter, Shadows of a Sunbelt City
The most celebrated and seemingly successful cities in postindustrial America have gotten their fair share of satire in recent years. The HBO series Silicon Valley (2014–present) lampoons the thinly veiled greed and self-congratulatory zeal of techies who only want “to make the world a better place” in San Francisco’s Bay Area, while IFC’s Portlandia (2011–present) has mocked the eccentric culture of the most quintessentially “hipster” city in th…
Collectors, Con Men, and the Struggle for Property Rights
This chapter examines how collectors, listeners, and entrepreneurs took advantage of a legal gray zone—that composers deserved to benefit from recordings of their work but that record companies did not enjoy a copyright for their recordings—to rerelease old and out-of-print recordings, beginning in the 1930s. It considers how such activities landed bootleggers in court, often with indecisive results, and triggered a struggle for property rights. …
Mp3
Reviewed by: MP3: The Meaning of a Format by Jonathan Sterne Alex Sayf Cummings (bio) MP3: The Meaning of a Format By Jonathan Sterne. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012. Pp. xvi+342. $24.95. “The MP3 is the most common form in which recorded sound is available today,” Jonathan Sterne says early on in this kaleidoscopic work (p. 1). It is “ubiquitous and banal” (p. 2), a technology that has remained remarkably unexamined outside of its effec…
Democracy of Sound
It was a time when music fans copied and traded recordings without permission. An outraged music industry pushed Congress to pass anti-piracy legislation. Yes, that time is now; it was also the era of Napster in the 1990s, of cassette tapes in the 1970s, of reel-to-reel tapes in the 1950s, even the phonograph epoch of the 1930s. Piracy, it turns out, is as old as recorded music itself. This book uncovers the little-known history of music piracy a…
Making and Unmaking Intellectual Property
Reviewed by: Making and Unmaking Intellectual Property: Creative Production in Legal and Cultural Perspective Alex Sayf Cummings (bio) Making and Unmaking Intellectual Property: Creative Production in Legal and Cultural Perspective. Edited by Mario Biagioli, Peter Jaszi, and Martha Woodmansee. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. Pp. vi+466. $40. Jack Donaghy, the fictional GE executive on the sitcom 30 Rock, lauded his boss Don Geiss for …
The Public Domain
Reviewed by: The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind Alex Cummings (bio) The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind. By James Boyle. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008. Pp. xvi+315. $18. “Can one build a politics to protect a residue?” James Boyle asks toward the end of this lively account of recent attempts to foreclose the public domain. The Duke University law professor was among the first to sound the alarm a…
From Monopoly to Intellectual Property
In the last decade, intellectual property has been the subject of renewed political debate and scholarly engagement in the United States. Americans have divided over issues ranging from online piracy of music to the digitization of books by Google, while movements such as Copyleft and Creative Commons have emerged to challenge what they see as overly restrictive property rights. The commotion around copyright reflects a real change in the way vis…
Democracy of Sound
It was a time when music fans copied and traded recordings without permission. An outraged music industry pushed Congress to pass anti-piracy legislation. Yes, that time is now; it was also the era of Napster in the 1990s, of cassette tapes in the 1970s, of reel-to-reel tapes in the 1950s, even the phonograph epoch of the 1930s. Piracy, it turns out, is as old as recorded music itself. This book uncovers the little-known history of music piracy a…
Brain Magnet”
This essay aims to historicize urban theorist Richard Florida’s influential formulation of the “creative class” by focusing on the emergence of a high-tech economy in North Carolina’s Research Triangle metropolitan area. In the 1950s, a powerful coalition of academics, businesspeople, and politicians launched a plan to move the state away from its traditional reliance on low-wage industries by founding a research park between Raleigh, Durham, and…
Of sorcerers and thought leaders
Hoopla about the emergence of an information economy was widespread by the 1990s, when academics, politicians and the press celebrated the social transformations brought about by computers. Yet the rhetoric of high-tech revolution long predates Windows 95 or even the World Wide Web. Building on the work of Howard Brick and others on postwar debates over technology and the economy, this article explores how the trope of the “information revolution…
From Monopoly to Intellectual Property
In the last decade, intellectual property has been the subject of renewed political debate and scholarly engagement in the United States. Americans have divided over issues ranging from online piracy of music to the digitization of books by Google, while movements such as Copyleft and Creative Commons have emerged to challenge what they see as overly restrictive property rights. The commotion around copyright reflects a real change in the way vis…
The Public Domain
Reviewed by: The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind Alex Cummings (bio) The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind. By James Boyle. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008. Pp. xvi+315. $18. “Can one build a politics to protect a residue?” James Boyle asks toward the end of this lively account of recent attempts to foreclose the public domain. The Duke University law professor was among the first to sound the alarm a…
Making and Unmaking Intellectual Property
Reviewed by: Making and Unmaking Intellectual Property: Creative Production in Legal and Cultural Perspective Alex Sayf Cummings (bio) Making and Unmaking Intellectual Property: Creative Production in Legal and Cultural Perspective. Edited by Mario Biagioli, Peter Jaszi, and Martha Woodmansee. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. Pp. vi+466. $40. Jack Donaghy, the fictional GE executive on the sitcom 30 Rock, lauded his boss Don Geiss for …
Collectors, Con Men, and the Struggle for Property Rights
This chapter examines how collectors, listeners, and entrepreneurs took advantage of a legal gray zone—that composers deserved to benefit from recordings of their work but that record companies did not enjoy a copyright for their recordings—to rerelease old and out-of-print recordings, beginning in the 1930s. It considers how such activities landed bootleggers in court, often with indecisive results, and triggered a struggle for property rights. …
Mp3
Reviewed by: MP3: The Meaning of a Format by Jonathan Sterne Alex Sayf Cummings (bio) MP3: The Meaning of a Format By Jonathan Sterne. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012. Pp. xvi+342. $24.95. “The MP3 is the most common form in which recorded sound is available today,” Jonathan Sterne says early on in this kaleidoscopic work (p. 1). It is “ubiquitous and banal” (p. 2), a technology that has remained remarkably unexamined outside of its effec…
Democracy of Sound
It was a time when music fans copied and traded recordings without permission. An outraged music industry pushed Congress to pass anti-piracy legislation. Yes, that time is now; it was also the era of Napster in the 1990s, of cassette tapes in the 1970s, of reel-to-reel tapes in the 1950s, even the phonograph epoch of the 1930s. Piracy, it turns out, is as old as recorded music itself. This book uncovers the little-known history of music piracy a…
Of sorcerers and thought leaders
Hoopla about the emergence of an information economy was widespread by the 1990s, when academics, politicians and the press celebrated the social transformations brought about by computers. Yet the rhetoric of high-tech revolution long predates Windows 95 or even the World Wide Web. Building on the work of Howard Brick and others on postwar debates over technology and the economy, this article explores how the trope of the “information revolution…
Eliot M. Tretter, Shadows of a Sunbelt City
The most celebrated and seemingly successful cities in postindustrial America have gotten their fair share of satire in recent years. The HBO series Silicon Valley (2014–present) lampoons the thinly veiled greed and self-congratulatory zeal of techies who only want “to make the world a better place” in San Francisco’s Bay Area, while IFC’s Portlandia (2011–present) has mocked the eccentric culture of the most quintessentially “hipster” city in th…
Brain Magnet”
This essay aims to historicize urban theorist Richard Florida’s influential formulation of the “creative class” by focusing on the emergence of a high-tech economy in North Carolina’s Research Triangle metropolitan area. In the 1950s, a powerful coalition of academics, businesspeople, and politicians launched a plan to move the state away from its traditional reliance on low-wage industries by founding a research park between Raleigh, Durham, and…
Authors and Apparatus
Reviewed by: Authors and Apparatus: A Media History of Copyright by Monika Dommann Alex Sayf Cummings (bio) Authors and Apparatus: A Media History of Copyright. By Monika Dommann. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019. Pp. 262. Hardcover $41.95. "We historians always come to things late," Monika Dommann writes in an epigraph for the ages. It is the curious weakness of history as a discipline to pick up on new theories and methodologies only afte…
Listening to the Democratic Forest with Brian Harnetty
Sound artist Brian Harnetty talks about his Forest Listening Rooms project and reflects on the politics of building interactive, immersive conversations about people and the landscapes that surround them in Appalachia, as well as the artistic and philosophical influences on his unique approach to composition
Wrap-up
It’s a dark and stormy night on the Taconic State Parkway, in upstate New York; snaking along the path of the Hudson River, the road is usually scenic but tonight is draped with rain and headlight glare. A voice from North Country Public Radio calls off a list of names, frenetically free-associating about Dominick Calsolaro and Lucinda Hannon and Mary Perrin Scott and all the other generous people who donated to the station to keep public radio a…
Political science (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Law (8 works) · Media studies (7 works) · History (6 works) · Art (5 works) · Politics (5 works) · Art history (4 works) · Diverse Musicological Studies (4 works) · Law and economics (4 works)